CROZET, Pays de Gex, France - - This stylish hotel and restaurant complex with the touch of a southern African luxury game and sports lodge is a relatively new addition to the Lake Geneva Region. Situated in a 35-hectare park just outside the small French town of St Genis in the Pays de Gex at the foot of the Jura mountains, it offers a spectacular view of Geneva and the Alps, barely ten minutes drive from the airport. During the summer, the outside terrace of the Shamwari Restaurant with its comfortable Bauhaus wicker armchairs and white parasols makes an ideal waterhole for sundowners. Jivahill’s particular attraction is that it doubles as a spa country club with an elaborate wellness centre, horse riding, golf practise area, water skiing and jogging track. Rare among Swiss and French restaurants, there is also a play area for kids.
Overall, this is not a bad place for business meetings or seminars within sight of Geneva – and in a healthy, open-air environment.
The Montreux Jazz Café in the arrival hall of Geneva’s international airport seems like a pretty cool idea.Open a chic café designed to highlight the Montreux JazzFestival, and while customers sip that extravagantly priced cappuccino, waiting for the arrival of the routinely delayed Air France flight from Paris, they can watch a video of the jazz performance that they missed while stalled on the Montreux exit of the autoroute last year. The question of quality, as William Dowell, one of our Essential Edge editors discovered to his acoustic dismay, is is a much different matter.
The last French-speaking village before entering the more pristine and ostentatious environs of Swiss-German and jetsetting Gstaad, Rougemont is pleasantly situated at the edge of the Canton of Vaud’s prealp Pays d’Enhaut region. Often serving more as a transit route for those heading up to the Bernese Oberland, this is a somewhat removed area of high mountain pastures, forests and rocky promontories ideal for hiking, climbing and wildlife watching (chamois, Ibex, troyal eagles…), and, in the winter, family skiing. Of course, the largest of the Pays d’Enhaut’s three communes, Château-d’Oex further down the road toward Gruyere, is better known as the world’s balloon capital. Essential Edge contributor Jeffrey Carmel decided to explore one of the ‘up there’ region’s best kept culinary secrets, the Comptoir d’Enhaut, a café-restaurant located in a mid-19th chalet that once belonged to one of Switzerland’s oldest priories and whose church in Rougemont village still exists, dating back to the 11th century.
Autumn in gastronomic terms is the season of “la chasse” or game and the hunt for a good game restaurant begins. The first restaurant we tracked down was Café Chaumaz in Russin on the recommendations of a friend. The Commune of Russin on the western outskirts of Geneva consists of a small group hamlets in the middle of the Canton’s principal winegrowing area. It also overlooks a major nature reserve of woodlands along the Allondon river leading into the Rhone. We drove blindly through the dark countryside, none of us having printed out the email with the address, until we stumbled upon a house of welcoming lights and friendly staff in the middle of the vineyards.
Locally, it is know as the “Halfway Café” – halfway up the mountain, that is. Some 20 kilometres from Geneva and six kilometres up the Col de la Faucille in the Jura, the Refuge de Florimont has one of the most spectacular restaurant views in the region. This is the sort of place to bring – and impress - visitors by saying, “I happen to know a good little restaurant…"
CROZET, Pays de Gex, France - - This stylish hotel and restaurant complex with the touch of a southern African luxury game and sports lodge is a relatively new addition to the Lake Geneva Region. Situated in a 35-hectare park just outside the small French town of St Genis in the Pays de Gex at the foot of the Jura mountains, it offers a spectacular view of Geneva and the Alps, barely ten minutes drive from the airport. During the summer, the outside terrace of the Shamwari Restaurant with its comfortable Bauhaus wicker armchairs and white parasols makes an ideal waterhole for sundowners. Jivahill’s particular attraction is that it doubles as a spa country club with an elaborate wellness centre, horse riding, golf practise area, water skiing and jogging track. Rare among Swiss and French restaurants, there is also a play area for kids.
Overall, this is not a bad place for business meetings or seminars within sight of Geneva – and in a healthy, open-air environment.
The last French-speaking village before entering the more pristine and ostentatious environs of Swiss-German and jetsetting Gstaad, Rougemont is pleasantly situated at the edge of the Canton of Vaud’s prealp Pays d’Enhaut region. Often serving more as a transit route for those heading up to the Bernese Oberland, this is a somewhat removed area of high mountain pastures, forests and rocky promontories ideal for hiking, climbing and wildlife watching (chamois, Ibex, troyal eagles…), and, in the winter, family skiing. Of course, the largest of the Pays d’Enhaut’s three communes, Château-d’Oex further down the road toward Gruyere, is better known as the world’s balloon capital. Essential Edge contributor Jeffrey Carmel decided to explore one of the ‘up there’ region’s best kept culinary secrets, the Comptoir d’Enhaut, a café-restaurant located in a mid-19th chalet that once belonged to one of Switzerland’s oldest priories and whose church in Rougemont village still exists, dating back to the 11th century.
Autumn in gastronomic terms is the season of “la chasse” or game and the hunt for a good game restaurant begins. The first restaurant we tracked down was Café Chaumaz in Russin on the recommendations of a friend. The Commune of Russin on the western outskirts of Geneva consists of a small group hamlets in the middle of the Canton’s principal winegrowing area. It also overlooks a major nature reserve of woodlands along the Allondon river leading into the Rhone. We drove blindly through the dark countryside, none of us having printed out the email with the address, until we stumbled upon a house of welcoming lights and friendly staff in the middle of the vineyards.
Locally, it is know as the “Halfway Café” – halfway up the mountain, that is. Some 20 kilometres from Geneva and six kilometres up the Col de la Faucille in the Jura, the Refuge de Florimont has one of the most spectacular restaurant views in the region. This is the sort of place to bring – and impress - visitors by saying, “I happen to know a good little restaurant…"